In the conventional textbook demand-supply model of competitive labour markets, introduction of a minimum wage above the market-clearing level must reduce employment. Empirical findings suggest, however, that this might not always be the case, which appears to be most readily explained by...

We quantify the role of contractionary monetary shocks and wage rigidities in the U.S. Great Contraction. While the average economy-wide real wage varied little over 1929-33, real wages rose significantly in some industries. We calibrate a two-sector model with intermediates to the 1929 U.S....

We consider the effect of money illusion - defined referring to Stevens' ratio estimation function - on the long-run Phillips curve in an otherwise standard New Keynesian model of sticky wages. We show that if households under-perceive real economic variables, negative money...

The present paper explores the connection between inflation and unemployment in different models with fair wages both in the short and in the long runs. Under customary assumptions regarding the sign of the parameters of the effort function, more inflation lowers the unemployment rate, though to...

Using a standard dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that the interaction of staggered nominal contracts with hyperbolic discounting leads to inflation having significant long-run effects on real variables. -- Inflation ; unemployment ; Phillips curve ; nominal inertia ; monetary policy ;...

A growing body of evidence suggests that an important reason why firms do not change prices nearly as much as standard theory predicts is out of concern for disrupting ongoing customer relationships because price changes may be viewed as unfair. Existing models that try to capture this concern...

A defining feature of business cycles is the comovement of inputs at the sectoral level with aggregate activity. Standard models cannot account for this phenomenon. This paper develops and estimates a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model which can account for this key regularity. My...

Using a standard dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that the interaction of staggered nominal contracts with hyperbolic discounting leads to inflation having significant long-run effects on real variables

The Friedman rule states that steady-state welfare is maximized when there is deflation at the real rate of interest. Recent work by Khan et al (2003) uses a richer model but still finds deflation optimal. In an otherwise standard new Keynesian model we show that, if households have hyperbolic...

We propose a theory of low-frequency movements in unemployment based on downward real wage rigidities. The theory generates two main predictions: long-run unemployment increases with (i) a fall in long-run productivity growth and (ii) a rise in the variance of productivity growth. Evidence based...